Recruiting is hard and most of us dislike the idea of ringing up people to ask them to do something for us. It’s much easier to do it ourselves then ask for volunteers and so the myth is born and perpetuated that no one in our church will or can volunteer. The result of this is us only ever recruiting volunteers when we are absolutely desperate which re-enforces the belief that volunteers are only there as assistance not as partners in a vital ministry.
This is a lesson I learnt in my first year as a youth worker for St John’s church in Bradford. For the first year I went through the pattern described above. Fearing to recruit and ask people to help me meant a sense of failure for myself when groups weren’t staffed properly and many phone calls to my vicar an hour before our youth group started to see who could come just to be there as I ran the group. It was only a year later on a leadership training week that I finally had the revelation that ‘I am not doing youth work for the church. I am there to help the church do youth work.’ Changing my mindset didn’t fix my problem. I still felt nervous making phone calls and just as awkward asking for volunteers, but I realised the necessity of training the church to minister to young people and the damage that doing it alone would cause. We are there to equip and encourage the church, not to disempower them by holding a ministry too tightly.
With this view in mind how do we go about recruiting volunteers. The two tactics discussed in the Youth Work State of Mind podcast (link below) are blanket invitation and personal invitation. Behind these two tactics lie two vital requirements to gain interest from a potential volunteer. Ministry visibility and personal relationship. There is a third, clear communication, which we will get to later.
Ministry visibility is an important yet often neglected area of youth work which feeds into the recruitment process. This is the art of sharing the church’s vision for youth ministry, encouraging stories of what God is doing in young people’s lives and publicly thanking volunteers. A church who sees the youth group as an add on that the youth worker does so the rest of us can get on with the ‘proper church stuff’ is going to be a very sparce pool from which to fish volunteers from. But a church that is constantly being shown the great things that God is doing in the lives of their young people, can see a plan of where the ministry can go, and knows the volunteers in this ministry are valued sets us up for success in our recruitment. This doesn’t mean we only ever say wonderful things about the youth ministry as it is also important to be transparent and voice concerns and difficulties. But as clergy, youth workers and volunteers we have the ability to prepare the ground for the recruiter and intentionally celebrating our work with young people does just that. As mentioned by Graham in the podcast previously mentioned this should happen at the front of church in order to bring the ministry to people’s attention. Equally it happens after church and during the week over a cup of coffee and in small groups. Ministry visibility only comes with intentionality.
The second element in our recruitment formular is the personal invitation. The importance of cultivating a good relationship with anyone on your team cannot be overstated and this starts at the recruitment process. A personal phone call or a meeting at a local coffee house is not only a fun way to spend an hour of your day but also a very effective tool to recruit more volunteers. The key to the effectiveness of personal invitation is organisation and prioritising these meetings as a regular part of your week. Firstly, identify the positions you need volunteers for. Not just for the week coming up but for the next year. With this list write down not one but multiple names by the side of each job that needs filling. With this list in hand, carve time in your diary to make 5 phone calls a week. Then comes the hard part, making the phone call. To take the pressure off, this first phone call to a potential volunteer is not with the aim of getting a commitment from them there and then but only to present the idea and ask them to think and pray about it. As a result of this you do not have to wait until the perfect moment to have this call or meet up, but a message left will suffice. The important thing is to pick up the phone and ring. A consistent and regular routine of this recruitment process will yield results. When you have received your answers and exhausted your list, go back to see what positions still need filling and start the process over again.
Communication is the key to a great team and again this starts at the recruitment stage. When asking someone to volunteer it is easy for us to make compromises and back down trying to make the job easier for them just so they will say yes. Though this may fill a gap in the short term, it creates problems long term and doesn’t help you or your volunteer. During the initial conversation it is important to fully outline the position you are asking the volunteer to fill without pulling anything out to make it sound nicer. You may then discuss any changes that need to be made for that volunteer. If this happens make sure to note the responsibilities that this person cannot do as that is a position that still needs to be filled. Once this is done make it a practice in the ministry to give a volunteer job description to your team. This then clearly indicates what is expected from the volunteer so that they have clarity on what they are doing without things being sprung on them. Equally it gives you a standard to hold volunteers up to if in the future you realise, they are not a good fit. For more on this see the safer recruitment guidelines for your church or for Blackburn diocese.
As out lined in the Youth Work State of Mind podcast there are dangers to look out for in the above models. It is important to be aware that with a blanket invitation we can attract the wrong people as well as the right people and we have to be careful in the phrasing of these appeals while also sticking to a consistent safer recruitment process in order to find the best fit for each volunteer. Equally it is important that when inviting people personally we do not make them feel pressured of forced into a role that they are not comfortable with.
Recruiting is hard, but when we lay the foundations by making our ministry visible, have a safe recruitment process in place and dedicated time to picking up the phone it can be a manageable, easier, and even enjoyable part of youth ministry.
Ben Green
Youth Work Adviser
youth@blackburn.anglican.org
Michelle Nuttall
Administrator
01254 503419
